Chapter 297 Leave Emilia Alone

Chapter 297: Chapter 297 Leave Emilia Alone

Scott’s POV

I watched the whole thing on my phone, the press conference Sebastian Simons had thrown together to shut down the smear campaign against Emilia.

And I’ll be honest, I hadn’t expected it. Sitting there behind that long table, batting away every barbed question the press hurled at him, he looked exactly like what an Alpha was supposed to be.

An Alpha who shielded his Luna. A man who took the hit so she wouldn’t have to.

It didn’t square with the Sebastian I’d known before. The one I’d heard about was arrogant to the bone, a man whose ego and whose entire personality were one and the same thing. This one leaned into the microphone and told a room full of vultures that love wasn’t charity, that he’d chased her, that she’d never come sniffing after his money.

Love isn’t charity, and it isn’t a consolation prize you hand to whoever people feel sorriest for.

I sat in my office chair and listened to all of it.

Can it really change a man that much? The mate bond, whatever runs between two people who are meant for each other.

I’d always thought people were who they were. That kind of nature was almost impossible to change. Watching him, I wasn’t so sure anymore.

Then he grabbed the water bottle off the table and threw it straight at a reporter’s shoulder.

I let out a breath through my nose. All right. So the temper’s still in there.

I closed the stream. The conference was finished, near enough, and I didn’t need to watch anymore.

Instead I pulled up my thread with Emilia. My last three messages sat there, unread, gray, going nowhere.

I could picture her clear as day. Not the woman from the headlines, the greedy little climber they were painting her as. The real one. The day she’d walked into Hanson Group to interview, back straight, chin up, answering every question like she’d been running the place for years. She’d worked for me three years since, sharp and steady, never once giving me a reason to doubt her.

She’d always kept a wall up between us, though. A clean, polite distance. And I’d respected it, because that was the decent thing to do.

Emilia had been like a small boat out on open water, riding up and down at the mercy of whatever wind and wave came for her. I’d always wanted to reach her. I’d never quite been able to catch hold.

Turns out being a gentleman just means you watch the door close on your own chances.

I set the phone face down on my desk and made myself think it through properly.

The attack on Emilia had moved too fast. One night, and it was on every front page in the city, spreading like a grease fire. Sebastian’s pack had money and reach, and even they hadn’t managed to smother it. That didn’t happen on its own. Someone was feeding it oxygen, fanning it, keeping it alive.

And Emilia wasn’t a woman who made enemies. In three years I’d never once seen her provoke a soul. She kept her head down and did her work.

There was only one person I could think of who’d go this far to bury her.

My jaw tightened.

I snatched my car keys off the desk and headed for the door.

I drove straight to my mother’s newly minted outfit, Pegasus Corporation, and took the elevator up without announcing myself.

Claudine looked up from her desk, genuinely startled to see me standing in her doorway.

"Scott. What on earth brings you here today of all days?"

I didn’t sit. I fixed my eyes on her and got straight to it.

"Was it you? The fake report on Emilia, the one painting her as some gold-digger who clawed her way into a rich pack?"

Her face shut like a door slamming. "Don’t be absurd."

"Don’t." I took a step in. "You can fool the whole city if you want. Did you honestly think you could fool me too? I’m your son. I know how you work better than anyone alive."

"You don’t need to concern yourself with what I’ve done." Her voice went flat and cold. "All you need to understand is that every single thing I do, I do for you."

Heat climbed up the back of my neck. "Don’t you dare use me as your excuse to gut someone I never wanted hurt. Emilia trusted you. She actually thought you were kind. And this is what you did to her behind her back."

"Are you looking down on me?"

"Yes." I didn’t blink. "And if you keep pulling stunts like this, I’ll think even less of you. If that bothers you, then here’s how you fix it. You leave Emilia alone."

I turned and stormed out before she could answer. She called after me to come back, again and again, but I ignored every word and kept walking.

Emilia’s POV

I stood in the room long after the others drifted back to their desks, staring at the frame on the monitor.

Sebastian. The throw. Water arcing through the air toward that smug reporter’s face.

He’d done all of that for me. Stood in front of a hundred cameras and made himself the villain of the evening news, just to keep my past buried.

Something twisted in my chest. Warm and painful at once.

"He fights hard for us," Eve murmured, a low ripple at the back of my mind. "Maybe it’s time you fought for yourself too. Tell him the truth."

She was right. I’d spent so long guarding my secrets like a dragon over gold, but Sebastian kept proving he’d stand beside me no matter how ugly things got. Maybe I owed him honesty. Maybe the thing about being infertile, the thing I’d buried deepest of all, wasn’t something I had to carry alone.

Two people, one problem. Wasn’t that the whole point of a mate?

I straightened my blazer, pulled in a breath, and headed for the elevator. His floor was three above mine. I’d tell him. No more hiding.

The doors slid open with a soft chime.

And there stood the one person in this entire building I least wanted to see.

Abigail.

Every warm feeling in me went cold.

What was she doing on Sebastian’s floor?